Eldridge Cleaver Quotes

• You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Teacher, People, Justice

  107 Copy quote

• You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Life, Idaho, Black History

  Speech to San Francisco Barristers' Club, San Francisco, Cal., Sept. 1968.

  70 Copy quote

• The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Love, Forgiveness, Hate

  Eldridge Cleaver (2015). “Target Zero: A Life in Writing”, p.49, Macmillan

  62 Copy quote

• Respect commands itself and can neither be given nor withheld when it is due.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Inspirational, Respect, Given

  ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1968). “SOUL ON ICE”

  86 Copy quote

• And why does it make you sad to see how everything hangs by such thin and whimsical threads? Because you’re a dreamer, an incredible dreamer, with a tiny spark hidden somewhere inside you which cannot die, which even you cannot kill or quench and which tortures you horribly because all the odds are against its continual burning. In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Love, Kindness, Greatness

  72 Copy quote

• They use force, to make you do, what the deciders, have decided you must do.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Use, Force, Decided

  72 Copy quote

• The racist conscience of America is such that murder does not register as murder really, unless the victim is white... blacks knew that white blood is the coin of freedom in a land where for four hundred years black blood has been shed unremarked and with impunity.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Blood, Years, Land

  30 Copy quote

• Every time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom. The white man forbade me to have the white woman on pain of death... I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman in my bed.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Pain, Men, White

  23 Copy quote

• I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Dream, Struggle, Usa

  56 Copy quote

• The most revolutionary statement in history is "Love thine enemy

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Enemy, Revolutionary, Statements

  22 Copy quote

• Every highly successful person is a maniac on a mission. Too much agreement kills a chat

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Life And Love, Successful, Agreement

  34 Copy quote

• The struggle of our people for freedom has progressed to the form where all of us must take a stand either for or against the freedom of our people You are either with Your People or against them. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Struggle, People, Problem

  Speech in San Francisco, 1968

  27 Copy quote

• Too much agreement kills a chat.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Funny, Communication, Agreement

  Eldridge Cleaver (2015). “Target Zero: A Life in Writing”, p.56, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• We shall have our manhood. We shall have it or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Earth, Gains, Manhood

  ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1968). “SOUL ON ICE”

  35 Copy quote

• I've gone beyond civil rights and human rights to creation rights.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Rights, Gone, Creation

  "'He was a symbol': Eldridge Cleaver dies at 62". www.cnn.com. May 1, 1998.

  28 Copy quote

• We have dedicated our lives, our blood, to the freedom and liberation of our people, and nothing, no force can stop us from achieving our goal. If it is necessary to destroy the United States of America, then let us destroy it with a smile on our faces.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Blood, America, People

  42 Copy quote

• I know that the black man's sick attitude toward the white woman is
  a revolutionary sickness: it keeps him perpetually out of harmony with the
  system that is oppressing him. Many whites flatter themselves with the idea that the Negro male's
  lust and desire for the white dream girl is purely an esthetic attraction,
  but nothing could be further from the truth. His motivation is often of such
  a bloody, hateful, bitter, and malignant nature that whites would really
  be hard pressed to find it flattering.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Girl, Dream, Motivation

  Eldridge Cleaver (2015). “Target Zero: A Life in Writing”, p.49, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

• Everybody changes, not just me.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  "'He was a symbol': Eldridge Cleaver dies at 62". www.cnn.com. May 1, 1998.

  15 Copy quote

• There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Loss, Greatness, Self

  30 Copy quote

• The object is for everyone to do their own thing, but the thing is to make one's thing the Revolution.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Revolution, Objects

  7 Copy quote

• With all its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Political, World, Faults

  Eldridge Cleaver (2015). “Target Zero: A Life in Writing”, p.272, St. Martin's Press

  7 Copy quote

• What America demands in her black champions is a brilliant, powerful body and a dull, bestial mind.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Powerful, America, Champion

  ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1968). “SOUL ON ICE”

  18 Copy quote

• The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Life, Cutting, Swings

  ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1968). “SOUL ON ICE”

  28 Copy quote

• History could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and title graven red in human blood.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Blood, History, African American

  "Soul On Ice".

  17 Copy quote

• The myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde.

  Eldridge Cleaver

  Beautiful, Strong, Women

  ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1968). “SOUL ON ICE”

  18 Copy quote

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